Thunderbird Stamps

Stories about giant birds often associated with thunderstorms appear in
many parts of the world throughout history. As early as the third
millenium B.C. the ancient Sumerians revered the giant lion-headed eagle
Imdugud whose roaring created thunder. The ancient
Hindus venerated Garuda, a giant eagle-like bird who served as
the mount of Vishnu. Four stories in
Tales from the Arabian Nights relate encounters
with the Roc (or Rukh), a giant bird said to be capable of carrying off
an elephant. In two of the stories Sinbad the sailor tangles with the Roc,
and he is carried off by one. The two other stories about the Roc
feature Abd al-Rahman. Italian explorer Marco Polo mentions the Roc
in his journals. Envoys from Madagascar presented Roc feathers to
the Chinese ruler. Madagascar was indeed formerly the home of a giant bird,
the elephant bird Aepyornis maximus, now extinct. However,
unlike the Roc, the elephant bird could not fly.

To Native Americans, the Thunderbird was usually a friend to humans,
a benevolent spirit being seen as the source of wisdom.
The Chippewa stated that the eyes of the
Thunderbird flashed with fire, his glance engendered lightning, and the
flapping of his wings produced thunder. The Algonkian tribes (the Ojibwa
among them) believed the Thunderbird to be a benign nature spirit.
The Kwakiutl said the Thunderbird taught them how to build houses.
The Assiniboin claimed the wise old Thunderbird never harmed or killed
anyone. The Thunderbird features prominently in Native American art.
In the 1970s Canada issued several postage stamps depicting
traditional Native American images of the Thunderbird.

Coexisting with the stories of a benign spiritual Thunderbird
are darker tales of corporeal giant birds of prey who sometimes
hunted and killed human beings. The Native Americans distinguished
these malign creatures both from ordinary eagles and from the the benign
Thunderbird. A Comanche story combines elements of both
types. A Comanche hunter once shot a giant bird he believed was a Thunderbird.
Shortly thereafter lightning struck and killed the hunter.

White Bear, a Cree who was by marriage a member of a Blackfoot tribe,
was abducted by a giant bird around 1850. After having
successfully killed a deer, White Bear suddenly found himself and
the deer he had killed snatched up by an omaxsapitau, a
giant bird well-known to the Blackfoot resembling an eagle but far larger.
White Bear was transported to the bird's nest where he found himself
on the dinner menu for two juvenile omaxsapitau. White Bear escaped
by hurling the juveniles out of the nest by the feet and holding
on, using the frantically flapping young birds as a parachute.
He released them as soon as he hit the ground, keeping just a couple
of tail feathers as a souvenir.

White Bear was a real person, a well-known eagle hunger, who
died in 1905. His grandson Harry Under Mouse told the story of
White Bear's encounter with the omaxsapitau to Claude Schaeffer
of Montana's Museum of the Plains Indians.

It is not just Native Americans who have seen giant birds in
the skies of North America. Many reports emanate from Missouri
and Illinois, particularly during the spring and summer months.
These birds are nearly always described as dark, perhaps black,
in color, with wingspans of five meters or more.
Curiously, the Illini and Miami talked
of a creature called the Piasa, "the bird who eats men." A famous
Native American drawing of the Piasa bird may still be seen near
Alton, Illinois.

In 1898 a farmer in Crawford County, Pennsyvania captured and caged a
giant bird. According to those who saw it, the bird stood between one
and two meters in height and possessed a wingspan of over five meters.
The farmer assumed the bird was an Andean or Californian condor, but ite
far greater size and its coloration did not match those birds. This may
have been the only "big bird" specimen ever captured alive in the United States.
Unfortunately the final disposition of the bird remains unknown.

In April 1948 Clyde Smith, his wife, and a friend, Les Bacon, spied
a giant bird at Overland, Illinois. They had at first thought
it to be a low-flying airplane until it flapped its wings.
Several other people reported seeing a giant bird in the same area
over the next couple of weeks.

On July 25, 1977 ten year old Marlon Lowe was carried off by a giant
black or dark-colored bird in Lawndale, Logan County, Illinois.
The bird carried Marlon thirty to forty yards before releasing him.
The bird was accompanied by another of its kind, perhaps its mate.

Pilots in small planes occasionally encounter giant birds.
For example, in 1961 a businessman flying a light
plane along the Hudson River Valley reported being buzzed by a giant bird.
Some suggest the bird might have taken the airplane for an enemy bird
and buzzed it as a warning.

Cryptozoologists suggest the stories about the giant birds may originate
in observations of surviving teratorns.
Some teratorn species reached truly gigantic size, including
Argentavis magnificens with an eight meter wingspread
and Teratornis incredibilis with a six meter wingspread.
The teratorns are usually assumed to have become extinct
thousands of years ago. Even if some still existed they could
not account for the stories of abductions such as that of
White Bear or Marlon Lowe. This is because the teratorns,
like their relatives the condors, had very weak feet,
incapable of grasping large prey. Probably they did not
build nests either. Only true raptors (acciptrids) like eagles
build nests and possess strong feet equipped with powerful grasping claws.

Gyps fulvusMongolia #915Issued 1972

Aquila chrysaetosSahara Occ. R.A.S.D.Issued 1996

Some stories of abductions by giant birds may represent encounters with
an unusually large Golden Eagle Aquila chrysaetos (left). This
bird normally possesses a wing span of over two and half meters.
Another possibility is that some sightings are of griffin vultures
(Gyps fulvus (right)) which have escaped captivity. The griffin
vulture's wingspan can reach over three meters and its body is dark
brown in color. The ability of these or any other known raptors to lift
and carry off even a small child -- let alone an adult -- remains
a matter of controversy. The most interesting possibility
is that there is an unknown native true giant raptor currently living in
North America which is powerful enough to carry off adult humans
like White Bear.

Incidentally. there is also a meteorological explanation for the origin of
Thunderbird -- as opposed to "giant bird" -- stories.
Jim O'Neil's thunderbird photos
illustrate how lightning can assume the form a giant bird. Other celestial
phenomena have also been linked to giant birds.
Bob Kobres's article
Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse
posits that bird-like aspects of comets figured prominently in the
cultural development of many peoples in early times. In two of the Roc
stories in Tales from the Arabian Nights the Roc drops
boulders on ships in retaliation for the killing of its chick. This may
have originated in observations of meteorites falling from the sky.

See the Birds section of
my cryptozoology links page for
more sites offering information about Thunderbirds and giant birds.

This stamp shows the Roc
carrying off Sinbad in the story from
Tales from the Arabian Nights .
One of a set of nine stamps depicting scenes from the
Arabian Nights.
You can also view the first day cover.